History, doctrine, culture, books

The Deuteronomist

Last week I posted on Josiah's religious reforms, which were apparently motivated by the discovery of an early version of what we now have as the book of Deuteronomy. I also suggested that the second half of 2 Kings (recounting Josiah's reign as king) was a good place to start reading the Old Testament. To complement 2 Kings (the last book in the Deuteronomistic History or "DH"), I'll next read Deuteronomy (the first book in DH) and Jeremiah (which shows marked stylistic similarities to DH). And just what is this Deuteronomistic History?

The Deuteronomistic History

My Oxford Guide to the Bible defines the Deuteronomistic History as "a term used by biblical scholars for a hypothetical work composed in ancient times that consisted of the books of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings." It explains that in 1943 Martin Noth proposed single authorship (or editorship, really) by a writer living during the Exile for the long narrative arc of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. Later, Frank Moore Cross extended this view, positing a first edition of DH written in the time of Josiah and culminating in his kingship and religious reforms, followed a generation later, in exile, with a revised second edition of DH explaining why everything fell apart and why the leading Judeans, covenant worshippers of the all-powerful God of Israel, were now living in exile in Babylon.

A very readable presentation of this and later scholarship is found in chapter 5, 6, and 7 of Richard Eliot Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? I'll pull some useful quotations. First, Friedman's summary. The aforementioned Martin Noth

showed that there was a strong unity between Deuteronomy and these six books of the Early Prophets. The language of Deuteronomy and parts of these other books was too similar for coincidence. Noth showed that this was not a loose collection of writings, but rather a thoughtfully arranged work. It told a continuous story, a flowing account of the history of the people of Israel in their land. It was not by one author. It contained various sections, written by various people .... The finished product, nonetheless, was the work of one person. That person was both a writer and an editor. (p. 103.)

This writer and editor is named "the Deuteronomist," an English word, fashioned from a Greek word, that designates a Hebrew narrative. Who was he? Friedman thinks it was Jeremiah, based in part on linguistic and thematic similarities that the book of Jeremiah shares with DH. He notes that Jeremiah was "in the right places at the right times" to author both the first and revised version of DH, and that he "possessed the literary skill needed for this achievement." Friedman notes that Jeremiah's scribe, Baruch, is another candidate for the Deuteronomist. Or it could have been "a collaboration, with Jeremiah, the poet and prophet, as the inspiration, and Baruch, the scribe, as the writer who intepreted history through Jeremiah's conceptions" (p. 147).

A last point (and this was raised in the comments to my prior post) is whether Jermiah's purported authorship of DH makes him or the resulting work a fraud. Friedman thinks not.

[H]e was no fraud, pious or otherwise. He built his history around the Deuteronomic law code, which was an authentically old document, and which he may well have believed to be by Moses himself. He used other old documents as well, and he fashioned a continuous history out of them. His own additions to that history gave it structure, continuity, and meaning. His last chapters told events that he had witnessed personally. There need not be anything fraudulent in any of this. Quite the contrary. It rather apears to be a sincere attempt, by a sensitive and skillful man, to tell his people's history — and to understand it. As a historian, he painted his people's heritage. As a prophet, he conceived of their destiny. (p. 149.)

Is It Helpful?

I think so. The idea that Jeremiah had a hand in creating the final narrative of the book of Deuteronomy as we have received it (as Friedman notes, editing and expanding the earlier Deuteronomic law code) makes the book more interesting to me. The high hopes that the narrative in 2 Kings plainly displays for Josiah and his reforms, followed so abruptly by his death and the destruction of the Judean state, make more sense in light of the two editions theory. Even the explicit mention of Baruch the scribe at a few spots in the book of Jeremiah seems to take on new significance, sort of a scribal cameo.

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Friedman's suggestion that Jeremiah could have been the Deuteronomist is quite interesting, though I have been told that in a subsequent edition of Who Wrote the Bible? that he backs down from that claim. I have the second edition, not the third.

In his second edition claims that Jeremiah agrees with Deuteronomy on “every major point.” Friedman cites several parallel passages, arguing that the ‘language and outlook” is “so similar that is hard to believe that they are not by the same person.”

On the other hand, Ben McGuire pointed me to an essay by Holliday claiming that Deuteronomy and Jeremiah quote and respond to each other.
(William L. Holliday, “Ellusive Deuteronomists, Jeremiah, and Proto-Deuteronomy (Catholic Biblical Quarterly; Jan 2004.)

And on my own, I've noticed that Jeremiah's call comes in the 13th year of Josiah's reign. If the reform started in the 12th year (with the King 20), Jeremiah's call comes after the reform begins. I found it interesting that Jeremiah is called (1:18) against the kings, the people of the land (who installed Josiah as King when he was eight), the priests, and the sarim (elders or princes), who happen to be the people and institutions who were at that time implementing the reform. Ezekial 22 provides a further, more extensive and near contemporary denunciation of these same groups.

Jeremiah clearly does agree with the reformers on various political issues and the evils of idolotry. But eventually I noticed that Jeremiah contradicts Deuteronomy on exactly the theological points that Margaret Barker sees as key to the reform, in which "Josiah's changes concerned the high priests and where thus changes at the very heart of the temple." For example, Deuteronomy 4 depicts Moses as informing Israel:

Keep therefore and do them [that is, the statutes and judgments of the law] for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. (Deut. 4:6)

Jeremiah seems to be commenting on this very passage:

How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain.
The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them? (Jer. 8:8-9)

Friedman and Bright both offer stronger translation. “How can you say, “Why we are the wise, For we have the law of Yahweh”? Now do but see—the deception it’s wrought, the deceiving pen of the scribes.” (Bright, 60)

Friedman, of course, argues that Jeremiah here is thinking of the deceptive Torah as the P source, and he makes some interesting arguments. However, he doesn't discuss the passages where Jeremiah and D conflict.

Deuteronomy explains that “For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it unto us that we may hear and do it?” (Deut. 30:11-12)

Compare these arguments with Jeremiah’s protest that the nation has “forsaken the fountain of living waters,” and adopted a form of Torah-based wisdom that involves “rejecting the word of the Lord.” In 1st Enoch and in 1 Nephi the tree and the fountain, both temple symbols, and are understood to be interchangeable symbols of the LORD.
Against this, Jeremiah speaks as one who has been invited to learn and declare the secret things:

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. (Jer. 33:3)

These differences (and others) relate specifically to the actions and attitudes of the reformers.

Also, there is the issue of who edited and transmitted Jeremiah? The dubious explanation in 2 Kings about the long dead King Manessah being the cause of wrath of the LORD falling on Judah appears in Jeremiah (Jer. 15:4). But in Jeremiah it contradicts everything else the prophet says.

RUN ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it. (Jer. 5.1)

Jeremiah constantly rebukes Jerusalem for its own immediate wickedness, warns of the coming judgment for such behavior, and constantly insists that the only remedy would be Jerusalem’s immediate repentance. (Ezekiel, a temple priest and contemporary of Jeremiah, is consistent with Jeremiah’s overall view on Jerusalem’s immediate accountability and the opportunity for repentance.) The passage about Manessah alone is enough to raise the issue about who transmitted Jeremiah’s writings and what might have been done with them.

Marvin Sweeney writes that:
"The matter is complicated by the fact that two forms of the book of Jeremiah are extant in the Masoretic and Septuagint forms, and that both were clearly composed into their present forms in the aftermath of the Babylonian exile. Scholars have noted that the books are heavily influenced by later theological viewpoints that play major roles in the presentation of the book and the prophet. There is extensive evidence of redaction and composition by hands that appear to be closely associated with or influenced by Deuteronomistic circles and outlooks. Overall, the present form of the book is shaped by a concern to address the problem of the Babylonian exile." (King Josiah of Judah: Lost Messiah of Israel., 208-9)

Mormon Books 2013-14

Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of MormonismGivens and Grow's warts-and-all biography of this energetic missionary, author, and apostle whose LDS career spanned Joseph Smith's life, the emigration to Utah, and Brigham Young's early leadership of the Church in Utah. My Review